TORONTO — Off the field, Jose Bautista is a sharp-dressed man. He knows fashion. So the man who wields the Toronto Blue Jays biggest bat naturally got a say in the team’s old-meets-new uniform design.

Everybody from the clubhouse manager to the team president offered their two cents too. And upon viewing the final product in a secret September session, Bautista was delighted with the committee’s work.

“They came out looking perfect,” Bautista said. “I couldn’t have designed them better myself.”

That brought chuckles from several hundred invited guests at the extravagant unveiling on the Rogers Centre Astroturf. And judging from the crowd response and the reaction of fans online, Bautista’s view represents a strong consensus.

Club president Paul Beeston and the players who modelled the uniforms emphasized that the new look puts the blue back in Blue Jays and restores the red maple leaf to a position of prominence. The club will downplay the “Jays” nickname that dominated the logo since 2004.

Gone are the black and silver that oddly represented a team named after a bird of blue for eight years. The new logo is an unmistakable homage to the team’s original 1977 insignia, with a slight relocation of the red maple leaf and a sleeker version of the old Blue Jay profile.

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Both logo and uniforms include the original “split lettering” used from 1977 through 1996.

The team will use the same hat home and away — an all-blue model sporting the new logo.

It is a look designed to last, said Beeston, the team’s first employee who left for a few years, came back and thought it was about time to get the black out of the Blue Jays’ trademark.

“I don’t think it will change too much and I don’t think it should change too much,” Beeston said. “I speak as somebody who’s here, but I think I also speak as a fan.”

He said fans can expect design tweaks as time goes on, but no major changes from “decade to decade.”

“There’s a loyalty to the mark, and the mark has been around for a long time. There’s been success with that mark, and let’s keep it … It just proves that that’s what we should have had [all along] because everyone agreed with it.”

The red maple leaf remained in the various logos through 2003, when the black, silver and blue look took over. The leaf was added to the uniform sleeve last year, but now it will occupy a more prominent spot in the logo on the front of the jersey and on the blue cap.

Bautista said his main suggestion — and that of his teammates — was to replace the lightweight ClimaCool uniforms with a heavier material. The old uniforms were uncomfortable as games wore on because they grew heavy with perspiration, he said.

“You won’t feel this jersey weighing heavy on you,” Bautista said.

Beeston said that was one of the easy decisions in the 18-month consultation process.

“Why wouldn’t you give the players what they want? But I don’t know whether some of the players are going to want that when they get into Texas and it’s 110 degrees,” he said.

Other easy calls: no more black, and definitely no more powder-blue throwback outfits.

One of seven players who modeled the new outfits at the lavishly catered ceremony, Bautista said he feels players and fans alike will appreciate a nod to history and look to the future. And for Bautista personally, there is another strong appeal.

“George Bell was here, Tony Fernandez, Juan Guzman, Damaso Garcia,” he said of the former stars who donned similar uniforms. “Even on some of the teams that didn’t win championships, we still had a huge presence from the Dominicans and Latins overall on those teams. We have something similar to that going on right now.”

Of the seven players who modeled Friday, four — Bautista, Ricky Romero, Yunel Escobar and J.P. Arencibia — have Latin American backgrounds.

Beeston said he never liked the black and silver combo introduced after he left, first to serve as president of Major League Baseball, then to pursue private business interests. He returned as president in 2008.

The look the team needed was right under its nose, he said.

“At the very end of the day, when we looked at it, we went right back to where we were and we upgraded it,” he said. “It’s been energized. It’s been modernized.”

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